


Rainy Birthday

by wirefern



Category: Phantom Thread (2017)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Awkward Sex, Breakfast, F/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-11 17:11:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15976769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wirefern/pseuds/wirefern
Summary: Alma gets what she wants for her birthday.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If it's not clear, I meant this to be funny. I think it just resulted in OOC and general bad-ideaness, but it's been here for a while so I guess it should stay?
> 
> I don't know what they called men's underwear in the UK in the 50s, plus much other stuff I don't know. Including, do they have electricity in the country house? Basic historic refrigerator facts? Plus: why did I write this??
> 
> I'm going to be realistic and admit that I just don't have the gumption to finish it. It's hard to write comedy based around sex that is both really awkward yet tender and sweet at the same time.
> 
>  
> 
> **Conclusion outline is in the Chap. 2 endnotes, if you're curious.**

Reynolds woke in bed at the country house on a humid, gloomy summer morning. Even this early in the day, and with the windows open, the temperature was very hot. Light rain fell outside and dripped onto the windowsill. He lay there, trying to ignore the heat and instead enjoy the smell of something sweet drifting from the kitchen: his wife was baking a birthday cake for herself.

Alma walked into the room. Reynolds propped up on his elbows to look at her. She wore a pair of his boxer shorts and one of his white broadcloth shirts. She cradled a mixing bowl in her arm, out of which she ate chocolate frosting with a soup spoon. She wore her hair in a humidity-frizzled braid around her head. Her fairy-tale-peasant's face gleamed with sweat.

"You're wearing my clothes, Alma!" he said.

She slid the spoon out of her mouth: "Yes."

"And haven't you plenty of your own clothes?"

She scraped frosting from the side of the bowl. The scraping sound annoyed Reynolds, but as it was Alma's birthday, he used his self-control and didn't fuss at her about it. His shirt was another matter.

Only after she'd swallowed the spoonful of frosting did Alma nod and respond: "Yes."

"Then there's no reason for you to wear mine, is there? Take them off. Remove them immediately. Baking in my shirt! What were you thinking? Have you ruined it with chocolate yet? Or butter?" 

Alma put the bowl on the table, dropped the spoon in with a clink, and slipped out of the shirt, carefully hanging it over the back of a chair. Then she walked to the bed, peeled herself out of his boxers--they clung to her sweat-damp thighs--and lay down beside him. She snuggled her face into his neck and began to lick the sweat off his skin, like a mother cat washing a kitten. 

"Alma, please stop doing that, Stop, please." Reynolds did not sound convinced of his own demand, and when Alma twirled her tongue at the base of his throat, he did not protest.

Reynolds sighed and buried his face in Alma's warm hair, which was unwashed and smelled like a favorite sweater or a treasured quilt.

Even when the weather was very hot, Reynolds couldn't sleep unless he wore both halves of his pajamas. Alma now unbuttoned the top, which stuck to his perspiring skin, and then rolled the bottoms down his legs and tossed them on the floor. She cooed at him about how hard he worked, and in an injured voice he agreed, noting for her how no one understood the burden of what he did and the unending fear he was forced to live with: fear that his dresses would be viewed with ambivalence, considered mediocre. That in the wave of impending chicness, he'd be left behind.

But Alma didn’t care about what Reynolds did or what he made. Dresses were important to her only because they were important to him. He was her hungry boy above all else. Heaven would be the Victoria Inn restaurant—his gazing up at her, demanding yet vulnerably needy, listing breakfast items with such precision you'd have thought his life depended on it. An elegant older man dressed in layers of tweed, yet somehow simultaneously ageless and genderless. Both stern and playful, a teasing father and a spoiled child at once. Alma would be happy to bring him pots of lapsang and poached eggs and bacon and whatever else he fancied for all of eternity.

"Be still, darling," Alma whispered, beginning to trace a line with her tongue from Reynolds' sternum through the center of his chest, to his stomach and navel. She repeated this back and forth, slowly, again and again, hypnotically. 

Again and again, Alma ran her tongue over his chest and stomach. Up and down. Occasionally she stopped when her tongue got dry, and she'd nuzzle the hair on his bony chest until her mouth grew wet with saliva again...then she'd get back to it. 

"Close your eyes," she told him. "Just concentrate. Don’t think about anything else."

The sound of the rain was gentle and without hurry. Alma extended her mouth's slow caress below Reynold's navel and began to focus there, stroking his flat stomach with her tongue from the hair of his groin back up to his belly button, back and forth. He was timid about Alma putting her mouth on his dick, but the tip of her tongue in his navel never failed to generate a pleasant electric shiver that made him want to pull her body on top of his.

Reynolds was a great believer in doing things the same way every time he did them, and this applied to sex as well. He wanted Alma to whisper loving and encouraging things to him as she rocked her pelvis back and forth atop him. He enjoyed lying beneath her warm, rhythmically moving body. Sometimes he came; sometimes he didn't. Alma worked on herself with her hand while he was inside her. When she began to come, he'd close his eyes, to give her a little privacy. Then she'd roll down beside him, to cuddle or sleep.

That was their routine, and Reynolds was more than happy for it to take place every every once in a while. But today was Alma's birthday, and she'd been specific about what she wanted.

Her request was very simple.

"Most men like it that way best," she'd said to him.

"The way I love you is a very private thing, Alma," he'd told her, his feelings hurt. He'd gestured to the bed, and then, subtly, with a flick of his hand, toward the bathroom door. "What most men like has nothing to do with me."

Alma nodded. It had been over a year since she'd begun regularly poisoning him--not just with mushrooms, but also with milder surprises, like Seconal in his wine or hashish in a black forest cake. Mushrooms were their favorite though. Nothing else left Reynolds in the degraded and helpless state they both desired for him. 

Pleasing Reynolds was always at the forefront of Alma's mind. She'd given him every part of herself, after all. Despite this dedication, she occasionally longed for the things he couldn't--or wouldn't-- provide to her: the entire weight of a man's body atop hers, the luxury of being freed from the burden of leading. 

Now in their overheated bedroom, which smelled so nicely of rain and melted cake icing and slept-in bedsheets, Alma sat up, arched an eyebrow, smiled, and said, "Well?"

Reynolds looked at her gravely and nodded. 

"Come here, my girl," he told her, and Alma felt a swell of tenderness toward him, because he called her his girl so rarely, and it was a father's term, and just slightly domineering. Acknowledging how much younger she was than him, and how, in almost all ways, she arranged her life in order to serve him. Even when she hurt him, she served him, because he loved being hurt.

Alma put her arms around Reynolds and ran her hands over his prominent spine and ribs. The feeling of her hands on him was very nice, though Reynolds immediately missed the coziness of lying under her. But Alma didn't want to hear any fussing today, he was sure of that. He kept to himself as well how exposed he felt in this position. He felt around for the top sheet, but it was crumpled beneath Alma, and she seemed in no mood to move.

Reynolds sighed and looked down at his wife. His silver hair fell in a curtain over Alma's eyes. She tried to blink it away with her eyelashes.

"I’m sorry," Reynolds said, his tone still solemn, and with calloused fingers he brushed his hair behind his ear where it immediately slipped free again.

He nuzzled her breasts, said, "Ah!," because they felt different from this position; fuller. He nipped tentatively underneath one of them, then flashed his eyes up toward Alma's face: asking permission. She said "Yes," and stroked his hair as he kissed her breasts with increasing boldness.

Then Alma wrapped her legs around Reynolds' waist, but he didn't like this, and said, "Oh, no, no, please. Your legs are pulling me down. I can’t move when you're pulling on me. You want me to move around a bit, don’t you?"

"Yes," she replied, and he nodded wisely.

They both sat up then and looked at each other.

"Do you want to touch me?" she asked. He appeared undecided, so she lay down, spread her legs, took his hand, and put it where she wanted it.

Reynolds had stabbed his index finger and thumb repeatedly while laboring with a thick needle on velvet earlier in the week, and his skin smarted—not unpleasantly—as he pushed this finger into her. 

"And another," she said, so he added the middle finger: a warm, wet fit. His palms were sweating. Sweat beaded in the pale undersides of Alma's spread-flat breasts. It was too hot for this, Reynolds thought. It was too hot for anything. He hoped the housekeeper had bought ice cream when she'd done the shopping earlier that week. The Woodcocks had recently purchased a dual-temperature refrigerator with a freezer compartment, and Reynolds had been enjoying ice cream on a daily basis since then. If the housekeeper hadn't bought any ice cream, perhaps Alma would drive out and buy some after all this, while Reynolds recovered from the heat with a lukewarm bath.

Reynolds lowered himself to an elbow, so he was half atop Alma and half beside her. He managed to insert all four fingers of his right hand inside her. (His baby finger was only in to the first knuckle, but it seemed he'd made the overall point.)

"Yes," Alma whispered, approving. She stroked the back of his head and kissed away the drops of sweat at his hairline. "Now try to open them up a little bit."

"Open them?" He shifted his body to better see her face.

"Yes. Try to open them." She held up her hand and slowly spread her fingers, millimeter by millimeter. "Like a morning glory. Like a....a starfish."

"A starfish? Are you sure?" 

A flush of embarrassment spread over Alma's face. She lifted her head to get a look at Reynolds' lap, then frowned.

" _Etoile de mer?_ ," he continued. " _Seestern_? Really? I have never had a woman ask me to do that. _Ever._ "

"That women haven't asked you to do things says more about you than them."

Reynolds raised his eyebrows, glaring at her. He didn't open his fingers like a morning glory or a starfish, but he didn't slide them out of her, either. 

Alma groaned and said: "Please remove your fingers from me." 

At this, Reynolds rolled his eyes, irritated. He took his fingers out of her, looked at his hand, and asked, "Alma, do we have ice cream?"

"Yes," she replied, sitting up, leaning back against the headboard, crossing her arms.

"Vanilla ice cream?"

"Yes," she said. 

"Is it really vanilla, or is it Neapolitan again?"

"Neapolitan," Alma replied.

"Is the chocolate in the middle? You know I don't like it when the vanilla touches the strawberry."

"I can't recall if the vanilla touches the strawberry." 

Alma stared at Reynolds, at his lanky, aging body. He’d been very spoiled, sexually, by all the young models he’d charmed so effortlessly. Alma learned how spoiled he was first time they made love. _You look thirsty,_ she’d told him, and there was a spark in his eye that she hadn’t seen since. Reynolds did nothing at high speed except drive, and he’d driven as though being chased to take her home and, she’d hoped, ravage her. He’d pulled her into his room with an urgency that she’d never see again in him, kissing her ferociously and then—undressing her. Undoing each clasp on the back of her black lace dress and ordering her to step out of it carefully. He tenderly spread the dress over the back of a chair, gazing at it as though _it_ were his lover.

She’d taken his hand and brought him to the bed, and yes, his own clothes were treated with the same reverence: slacks folded and set aside. Alma reached to undo his bowtie and that, too, was set on the table. His jacket, his white dress shirt, his belt: all set aside with painstaking meticulousness. In the meantime, Alma undid her own underthings, a light corset and slip, and left them in a pile on the floor. Then, finally, Reynolds took her by the shoulder, pushed her down on the bed, and guided her body into the position he liked. And that was that.

He did not remove his socks.

In hindsight, that brightness in his eye was the eagerness of someone unwrapping a gift, of receiving. The thought of there being any sort of exchange didn’t even cross his mind.

Reynolds’ dick was a little longer than those of the men Alma had been with before. She was pretty sure that if he thrust his hips upward, he’d hit her cervix. That was something that always excited her, the deepness of a hard thrust and the resulting flicker of pain.

But Reynolds wasn’t interested in thrusting.

She remembered how he’d gazed up at her from the pillows, ran a hand from her hip slowly up her side, over her belly to caress her breast and touch her face gently. Expectantly.

Alma slipped her fingers over her clitoris and rubbed herself at the same rhythm with which she rocked against him. She closed her eyes and forgot about him. He was simply a firm, warm presence inside her.

Reynolds was as finicky in bed as he was in all other situations. Just as the sound of Alma crunching toast perturbed him, he was equally particular about sex. Oral pleasure repulsed him. He would allow her to work on him with her hand and a small amount of lotion. This was often effective, but he’d want to take a bath immediately afterward rather than cuddle or return the favor. He had no tolerance for stickiness.

While Alma pondered all this on her birthday morning, in the hot, damp bed at the country house, Reynolds lost his patience, got up, and went to the wardrobe with the apparent intention of getting dressed and starting the day.

She watched him, slowly considering the situation and plotting how she could turn it back in her favor.

“Breakfast, Alma. What have you prepared for breakfast?” He glanced back at her as he began buttoning up his shirt, distracted.

“Birthday cake,” she responded. She crawled across the bed and redressed herself in the shirt and shorts she’d borrowed that morning.

He shook his head, frowning as he pulled up his slacks.

“Birthday cake isn’t breakfast.”

“It is if you eat it for breakfast,” she rebutted.

“Why must you be so silly, Alma? I shant have cake for breakfast.” He sat at the table to put on his socks, scowling at Alma's bowl of frosting and pushing it away. 

“Then you’re preparing your own breakfast today, because my kitchen is serving birthday cake, and there shall be no substitutions.” She walked out...intentionally annoying him by leaving the chocolate frosting behind in the bedroom.

“....And you’re wearing my clothes, still, Alma! Please wear something of your own. Wear a dress!” Reynolds called as Alma walked into the hall.

Alma ignored him and continued toward the kitchen, Reynolds at her heals. Alma's cake—yellow cake with chocolate frosting, the type of cake you’d make for a child’s birthday—sat in the middle of the dining table.

She'd forgotten to cover the cake. A wasp crawled on it; she flicked the insect away with her fingernail. Reynolds winced.

Alma continued on with her work of preparing breakfast. Reynolds stared at her, blocking the space between the sink and the dining table.  Alma was pleased that there was no sketchbook in his hands, no sandals on his feet—he’d ruin this pair of expensive socks on the flagstone floor. He was thinking about her more than he was thinking about his socks—and this was a victory of some sort for her.

The kitchen was a mess because Alma hadn’t cleared up from baking the cake. Sugar, flour, baking soda, and other items crowded the wooden counter. This did not detour her. She poured a bit of oil in a copper pan and set it to heat, filled the kettle and set it on a second burner to boil. She felt him watching her, and flashed him a smile. Half-dressed—shirt untucked and partially unbuttoned—Reynolds crossed his arms, leaned against the wall, and watched as though he were in charge her, frowning.

She took sausages wrapped in butcher paper and a bottle of heavy cream from the shining new refrigerator. She reached for Reynolds' tin of lapsang tea, poured boiling water in the tea pot, and set it aside. She pierced sausages with a fork—one, and then another—and dropped them into the pan where they sputtered.

Alma looked at him. His eyes moved from the cream, to the tea, to the pan; on his face, an expression of concentration and suspicion.

“Very good,” Reynolds said, praising her quietly in a voice that wasn’t without a bit of relief. “But you’ll need more sausages. You’re quite aware two won’t be enough for both of us.”

Alma shrugged and added a third sausage to the pan. Then she turned to her electric stand mixer, spooned in sugar, took the cold bottle of cream and poured it in, slowly, dramatically, raising the bottle so it rained in with a steady stream, then lowering it. This was a simple trick that impressed her customers at the restaurant, as it once had Reynolds, but now he knew she teased him with it and it bothered him.

She appreciated the mixer's roar and power. Reynolds typically left the kitchen when she ran it because the noise hurt his ears, but when she reached for a spatula to pull whipped cream from the sides of the bowl, she saw that he was still standing in his place, staring at her.

She took a porcelain teacup from the hooks on the wall, carried the teapot to the table and set it beside the cake.

“No, Alma, that’s the wrong cup,” he said. He liked his lapsang served in his Chinese tea cups. But Alma found his assertion meriting no more response than a  _pfft!_  and wave of her hand.

He took a seat in his chair where he liked to sit and sketch and often tell her what to do while she cooked. “I shant drink tea from that cup, Alma…”

“Don’t drink it, then.”

She picked up the teapot, poured some tea into the porcelain gold-rimmed teacup, and took a sip, startled by the strong, smoky flavor. Then she took a dinner plate from the cabinet. She removed the three sausages from the stove. They rolled on the plate as she carried it to the table.

At the table she leaned over the cake, looked at Reynolds, and cut a slice with a steak knife. She lifted the slice with her fingers, supporting it with her palm, and dropped it onto the plate beside the sausages.

Reynolds realized two things at this immediate moment: first, Alma had not washed her hands before touching the food, which sickened him when he thought of what they’d only just been doing in the bedroom. And, next, that the grease and spices from the meat rapidly were seeping into the yellow cake: sweet, savory; stomach-turning yet irresistibly indulgent...

Now Alma spooned up fresh whipped cream, burying the chocolate frosting under weightless swirls.

Before inviting Reynolds to eat this mess of a meal, which he both dreaded and craved, Alma tilted her head at him, smiled, and then, swiftly, pulled back her own chair back, sat, and sunk her fork into the cake. She began hungrily eating, lifting food from both the fork and the knife as if the fork alone couldn't get cake into her mouth fast enough.

The speed with which Alma ate, as well as the appalling combination of meat and dessert, left Reynolds repulsed.

Alma slowed down with her eating only to take a long swallow of tea. Then, taking up the utensils again, she said, in a very matter of fact tone, “You might as well go upstairs and get to work. I know that’s what you’re thinking about.”

“You don’t know that because it’s not what I’m thinking about at all.”

“Oh?” She looked up at him, wiping whipped cream from the corner of her mouth with her thumb.

He was thinking of how cruel she was to treat him this way. He relied on her to make his breakfast; without it, his day fell apart, fast. He had nothing to eat, and he'd get no work done. A long rivulet of sweat wet his back, running from his shoulder blades down to the waistband of his slacks.

Without a word, Reynolds stood up, walked to the refrigerator, and removed one egg. He took a copper pot from where they hung on the wall, filled it with water, and set it on the stove to boil.

Alma stared. She’d never seen Reynolds lift a finger in the kitchen. The sight was jarring: in his socks, half dressed, cracking an egg into the boiling water and then turning to match Alma’s stare.

She took an enormous bite of cake, not moving her eyes from his and filled her cup again with more of his lapsang. The strong flavor lingered in her mouth, tingeing every forkful of cake with smoke.

Reynolds removed the egg from the pot with a slotted spoon, slid it onto a plate, and came to the table and sat. The egg was perfectly poached, resembling a dollop of cream. He covered it with vicious shakes of salt and pepper, tossed a scattering of salt over his shoulder, and then cut into the egg with the side of his fork.

They both sat silently, eating: staring at one another.

Alma swallowed another mouthful of cake—she already was getting tired of eating, but continued for the show of it—and said, “I believe I'll call Dr. Hardy.”

“Why the hell would you do that?” Reynolds spiked his fork into the center of the egg and the bright yolk spilled out.

“He can examine you.”

“I don’t need a bloody examination, Alma. I’m perfectly healthy today.”

“He can examine me, then. A very  _thorough_  examination.”

A clank as Reynolds threw down his fork, shoved back the chair, and left the kitchen. Alma heard the thud of his stockinged feet on the stairs. He was headed to the attic, where he belonged.

She sighed and stood up, went to begin rinsing the plates, and reordered the kitchen. When the kitchen was clean, she went back to the bedroom, flopped onto the bed, and masturbated in the glorious heat, sweating and loving the smell of herself, arching her back and gasping, appreciating the empty room, the sound of the rain, the steady drip from the windowsill, and the reassurance that she could take care of herself.

She took care of herself three times, then stretched her limbs out in the center of the bed—all hers!-- and sunk into a delicious midday nap.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 ...meanwhile, upstairs, Reynolds contended with nearly unbearable heat and numerous wasps. His hands were sweating too much to touch fabric without gloves, but when he put on the cotton gloves, his palms sweated through them immediately.* 

He gave up, removed the gloves, and took his book to the sofa. There were two dresses he had to think up, and fast, for he had appointments that week.

When Reynolds pictured dresses, and sketched them quickly in his notebook, before the images in his mind could slip away from him, he sketched for dream women, idealized women. He had to have a beautiful woman's body near him in order to work. To make something beautiful, he needed a foundation of beauty. Both of the women whose dresses he had to roughly sketch out this week were middle aged, with no remarkably attractive qualities whatsoever. He drew first for the beautiful woman in his mind and then made adjustments for his clients later.

His pre-Alma muses had been harder to find than one might expect: first, he'd needed to find a young woman with the perfect shape. Then, he'd have to convince her to leave her home, family, friends, and lover, if she had one, and come to his townhouse, be available to him at all hours, and tolerate his moods. He'd have to make love to her, to seduce her, so that she wouldn't think he was a homosexual and look down on him with pity. With a few words--sharp and stinging, or lavish praise-- he'd capture her. He'd hold on to her until he could no longer squeeze any inspiration out of her, and then Cyril would show her to the door.

But now the single beautiful woman in his mind --still--was Alma. It was she who continued to stand for hours as he sewed clothes onto her body. He supposed she’d be his muse for good, for the rest of his life. There would never be another.

Oh, Alma! He truly was nothing without her. He had no sense of his life without the controlled chaos she imposed on him. Look at this morning: he wasn't even fully dressed! He'd cooked his own breakfast! And those games of Alma's, right away, as soon as he'd woken up....without a moment to collect himself. He wasn't a young man; he didn't often have morning erections, like someone Alma's age would. She couldn't just grab him as soon as he woke, and have her way with him! How could she expect him to participate in strenuous activity on an empty stomach, either? She teased him with her youthful sexuality. Even now, it was possible she'd creep up the stairs and start to fondle him right here, on the couch...yet it was equally possible she'd call Robert Hardy and invite him over to play gynecologist, as she'd threatened. 

This thought made Reynolds frown. It was quite unfair, the way she treated him at times. He worshipped every inch of her body: the touch of her hand on his cheek when he was flushed with fever, her arms around him to guide him from the bathroom to the bed. And what an obedient patient he was! Permitting her to spoon soup into his mouth without protest, allowing his muscles to go limp so that she could wipe the sweat from his body with a cool damp cloth when he was too weak for a bath.

And oh, he knew her secret, too: he'd woken in the night to see her in the bed beside him or in in the wingback chair with her hand working furiously between her legs. He'd caught her at it often enough to know it wasn't a mushroom-induced delusion. He closed his eyes and said nothing. Did she know that he'd seen her? There was no way he could be sure unless she told him; he'd never mention it himself. He didn't want her to stop.

This is why he had little pity for her when she made a fuss about what she claimed was a lack of interest in sexual intercourse and other activities on his part. 

Alma sometimes came up with various things she wanted him to do. Most of them involved his mouth. He was resistant; she was creative...and pushy. 

"Don't tell me again that physical intimacy 'unsettles' you," she'd mocked. "Do you realize the things I've seen your body _do_?"

Appalled, Reynolds thew his book down in a rage and, trembling and lightheaded, left the room.

Recalling this exchange now, in the attic, made Reynolds blanch. Once an unsettling thought or a memory was in his head, he found it hard to overcome. His family didn't appreciate that to be disturbed at breakfast wasn't a joke; it truly did knock him off track for the rest of the day.

That it was Alma's birthday meant little to Reynolds as far as her demands that morning went. It wasn't as though he'd forgotten her birthday, either. He'd worked secretly on a new dress for her, of gingham and eyelet lace; not an evening gown, but something simple she could wear when she served him meals, or on the rare occasions she had guests for tea. He'd also arranged dinner for her, for tonight, at the restaurant he'd taken her for their first date together. He had special instructions for the chef: he wanted rosemary chicken, fingerling potatoes, and creme brûlée made to perfection for her.

But that was tonight. What of the rest of the day?

Reynolds thought for a moment, and then went downstairs and into the bedroom.

Alma was asleep in the middle of the bed, still wearing his shirt. He went to the bed and put his hand flat on her shoulder. Yes, the shirt was fully damp with her perspiration: ruined. He'd never wear it again.

Waking, Alma rolled over and blinked up at him, rubbing her hand over her eyes. Her hair has come undone a bit; loose strands stuck to her wet, shining face.

Reynolds sat on the bed beside her. He brushed the damp strands of hair away from her forehead.

"Alma," he said. "I want to tell you a story." His demeanor was sweet and caring, like a father rousing a child from sleep.

Alma smiled. "You don't have any stories," she replied.

"But I do!"

"I know all of your stories. I know everything that's ever happened to you."

"You don't know this story, Alma! Let me tell it to you!"

"I even know how you'll die." With this, Alma reached up and touched Reynolds' face, running her fingertips in the hollows of his cheeks.

"Of course you do. But, Alma, let me tell the story!" Reynolds pushed Alma a bit to make more room for himself on the bed. He put his hand on her thigh. Lying on her side, she gazed up at him, still a little blurry with sleep.

"Alma," he told her, in a fast, hushed voice: "this is a love story. An erotic story."

"You're going to tell me an erotic story? You?"

**~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**

**(Unedited, un-fact checked and typo-filled, nonsensical dialogue starts here.)**

Reynolds' eyes moved away from Alma's face, toward the wall. She rolled on her back, yawned and stretched and lazily said, "I knew you didn't have any stories. Why did you wake me? Go back to your workroom."

He stared at her, then very purposely put his hand on her hipbone, hard and pointed beneath the damp broadcloth of the shirt she stole from him.

"I have many stories, Alma. I've lived longer than you."

She closed her eyes, lashes sticky and wet, and said, "You have lived longer than I have. But have more stories than you. I'm certain I've had more lovers than you have. And I've loved  _better_  than you have."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Alma pushed at his legs. "Get up," she said. "Go back to work. I was having lovely dreams and you interrupted them. And besides," she blinked "My stories are more exciting than yours, so I have no need to hear you prattle on."

"You're so sure of that? I haven't even begun to tell you what I want to tell you...."

Rolling her eyes, Alma sat up and leaned her back against the head of the bed, her shoulders resting against the rain-cooled windowsill. 

"Did you know," she said, "that you're not my first husband?"

"That's a lie."

"Is it? I loved him very much--"

"You're lying."

"--He died years before I met you. Before I came to England."

Reynolds sat up straight and blinked at her, displeased, saying nothing.

"I suppose you think he died during the war."

"I don't think that at all, because this man did not exist."

"But he did not die in the war..."

"Oh? Brilliant." Reynolds briefly crossed his arms and then, on second thought, returning his hand to Alma's warm hip. He leaned some of his weight on it, to remind her that he was here; that his body was here. He would have put his other hand on her other hip and rolled against her for a kiss, but the direction of the conversation unsettled him. She did not, at this moment, deserve a kiss.

Then he added: "Did you kill him?'

"No." Alma answered matter-of-factly, shifting beneath the pressure of his hand. "He died of natural causes--"

" _Naturally,_ this imagined husband died of natural causes," Reynolds scoffed. He wanted very much to kiss her.

"--He died of old age."

Reynold stared at her, silent, for a beat. "Why are you telling me this?"

"He was very loving. Tender.  _Generous."_

"Am I not generous?" This was a stupid question. Alma ignored it.

"Ever since I was a girl, I've loved older men."

He stared at her, frowning, brows creased with suspicion.

Alma wiggled a bare foot over Reynolds' thigh. 

"I never wanted boys my age," she told him. 

Reynolds increased his pressure on Alma's hipbone, allowing his fingernails to dig into her skin, just a bit.

"Do you know--" Alma continued, eyes flashing, her wicked grin on her pretty face, "--that you're older than my father would be, if he were still alive?"

She poked her toes between his legs. He was hard.

"Does that unsettle you?" she asked, her voice lowered, the rain pouring against the window so loudly that it could have been easy for Reynolds to pretend he hadn't hear her. But she continued.

"Does it hurt your feelings to hear me say that?"

"Of course not," he sneered, but his face betrayed him. Nostrils flared, he turned away from her.

Alma nudged at his groin with her toes, making him squirm. 

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye: her angelic face, with hair in a frizzled halo around her pretty head. Flashing eyes that could either comfort him or taunt him depending on what she wanted of him.

Alma broke a long stretch of silence by quietly announcing, "I'll tell you one of your own stories."

Reynolds turned his head to her fast, vexed, because the story-telling was his idea in the first place.

"I told you: I know all of your stories." Alma said. "This is one of my favorites!"

She leaned toward him and grasped the waistband of his slacks to pull him closer. She kissed his cheek, right beside his ear, and whispered: "I know you like watching women undress, through your little spy-holes..."

After a brief moment spent considering this assertion, Reynolds rebutted, "If you mean when we're presenting a collection..."

"No. That's not what I mean. I mean the peepholes all about the house. The one between your suite and my room, when I first arrived, to begin...but there are more."

Reynolds blanched; Alma slid her hands down from his trousers waistband so that they rested in his lap.

'It's an old house, Alma. There are all sorts of quirks about the house, added over the years, for different purposes..."

"Oh, but I know you watched me when you first brought me to the house, and I know you've watched others. Princess Mona, for one--"

"You don't know that, Alma!"

Alma's hands bundled up the fabric at the crotch of Reynolds' trousers. "But I do," she continued. She rolled her face against his neck; he smelled _so_ nicely. He was so perfectly, physically beautiful that even the scent of day-old perspiration on his skin was irresistible.

She slid one hand up the back of Reynolds' neck, cradling the back of his head in her palm, and gazing at him. With the other hand she fumbled with his slacks and shorts. Stroking her fingertips up and down his fully erect dick.

Reynolds shoved her away, stood up and said, "It's too bloody hot for that, Alma!" Then, on a sort of half-assed second thought, he stepped out of his slacks, folded them and set them on the table, and then resumed his position seated upright on the bed, facing her as she sat with her back to the window.

While he'd done nothing to hide his erection, he didn't make a single gesture toward allowing Alma to do anything about it, either.

Alma stretched out on her back in the bed again and pushed at Reynolds' knees and arms, saying, "Why don't you tell me your love-story now? It will lull me back to sleep."

He stared at her: closed eyes in a flawless pre-Raphaelite face, like Millais's Ophelia if his Ophelia were soaked in sweat and wore an unbuttoned man's dress shirt instead of flower garlands.

"Since you brought it up..."

"Brought up your voyeurism?" Alma opened one eye and looked at him, as if this interaction didn't merit the use of her full sight.

A silent moment and then Reynolds replied, in a drawn-out, deep and solemn voice: "Yes."

Alma closed her eyes, nodded, and then with a quick wave of her hand said, "Go on."

"Well. I had a...preferred client. And no, Alma, it wasn't you!"

"Of course it wasn't me. How sad for you if over forty years of watching women undress I was the best you saw." Both eyes shut for this comment.

Silence. Again, without opening her eyes, Alma said, "Are you going to tell me a story or not?"

"Fine. There was one whom I loved more than others. We worked together for, hmm..." he thought for a moment. "Thirty years."

(Alma smiled at this but said nothing.)

 

 **~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**  
This is an unfinished, poorly edited, abandoned rough draft. I'm super sorry to just leave scraps behind! But I just can't get it right and I don't have the time or motivation to keep trying.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The ending, if I were to finish this:**
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> Reynolds tells Alma about how he was in love with Henrietta Harding ~ 30 years ago. He went down on her in a dressing room. She was married, but whenever she was at the townhouse for dress fittings or whatever, he'd go down on her. He felt really connected to her bc of this intimacy, (plus he subconsciously equated her with his mom, bc that's his thing). Eventually Henrietta told him they had to stop bc Reynolds' performance just wasn't worth the stress involved with having an affair. He is absolutely heartbroken but deals with it over time. They remain emotionally close together; Reynolds keeps making dresses for her, and they have a platonic friendship for the next 30 years until she ditches the House of Woodcock due to its lack of chic.
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> After hearing all this, Alma is impressed that Reynolds ever attempted oral sex even at all, much less performed it regularly. Alma is extremely moved by this story. She confesses that she has considered having an affair with Dr. Hardy just so she can get some head, but she'd much rather have Reynolds do it. He agrees if she takes a bath first, and she does. While he goes down on her, she says/does something dom-y (I never figured out what!!!) which gets him going , and then they do it plain vanilla missionary style, and they both get off.
> 
> They take a nap. Later, it's time to go to dinner, but Alma seems little peaked. There is some discussion on whether or not the day's amount of sex has sapped her energy, but no: she's ill. Reynolds--the expert on poorly-advised eating-- points out that Alma ate a pretty weird combination of birthday cake and breakfast food earlier in the day, and it may have caught up with her.
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> Instead of going to dinner, Reynolds takes good care of Alma while she's ill, and it's all very sweet and cozy. The end.


End file.
